Now that it has taken over Motorola Mobility, Google is to restructure the phone manufacturer, cutting 20 per cent of the global workforce, which adds up to about 4,000 jobs.

According to The New York Times, a third of those job cuts will come from its US operations. Moto will close 94 offices around the world and scale down its presence in Asia and India.

Less money will also be spent on R&D in its Chicago, Sunnyvale and Beijing facilities.

The report quotes the Motorola’s CEO, Dennis Woodside, who says that this shift aims to refocus Motorola’s product line away from low-end devices and to focus on "a few cellphones instead of dozens."

One of the key assets that Google gained with its Moto purchase was 17,000 technology patents.

Woodside added that Motorola wants to refresh its image with features such as a more intelligent voice recognition that can work out who is in a room, as well as building better cameras and longer-lasting batteries into its devices.

Woodside also explained that despite the takeover and restructuring – which has also seen the loss of 40 vice presidents from Motorola’s management – Google is committed to running it as a standalone company rather than fully integrating it into Google.

It will also have to compete to make any “pure Android” Nexus devices for Google just like any other supplier.